Jack Higgins - Chavasse 02 by Year of the Tiger Page B

brightly on the large stone hearth and as Chavasse watched, Joro crumbled a handful of brick tea into a cauldron of boiling water and added butter and a pinch of salt.
    â€œYou haven’t got such a thing as a cigarette, have you?” Chavasse asked.
    Joro nodded across to the table. “One of my men emptied the Russian’s pockets. His things are over there. There were three of four packets of cigarettes, I believe.”
    Chavasse crossed to the table and stood looking down for a moment at all that remained of a man: a wallet, his travelling papers and three packets of cigarettes.
    He lit one slowly and, carrying the wallet and travelling papers, returned to the fire, where he sat down on a rough wooden bench.
    The wallet contained a wad of Chinese bank-notes, a couple of letters obviously received from friends in Russia and a membership card for a Moscow press club. There were no intimate little snapshots of wife or children, and feeling curiously relieved, Chavasse turned to the papers.
    There were the usual travelling permits plus a special visa for Tibet, date-stamped Peking and countersigned by the military governor in Lhasa. They were smeared with blood and badly damaged by a knife-thrust, but Kurbsky’s face still stared out from the photo of identification.
    Chavasse sat there looking at the papers, so deeply immersed in thought that when Joro pronounced the tea ready and handed him a metal cup, he drank the contents down without thinking.
    â€œThe tea.” Joro smiled. “You like it?”
    Chavasse looked at the empty cup in his hands with a slight frown and then grinned. “I didn’t even feel it go down. You’d better give me another.”
    It was curiously refreshing and he felt life returning to him. He lit another cigarette and said, “How far is Changu from here?”
    â€œPerhaps ninety miles,” Joro said. “Two days’ hard travelling by horse.”
    â€œWhat if we went in the jeep?”
    â€œThat would be impossible,” Joro said. “There are at least two hundred troops stationed there, and they patrol the vicinity regularly. If we even tried to approach the town in the jeep, we would be arrested.”
    â€œBut what if we drove right in?”
    Joro frowned in bewilderment. “How would this be possible?”
    â€œBy my telling the authorities that I’m AndreiSergeievich Kurbsky, a Russian journalist touring Tibet on a visa from the Central Committee in Peking. I speak excellent Russian, by the way.”
    â€œAnd what about your escort?”
    â€œMurdered by the bandits who ambushed our camp during the night. You can be the guide I hired in Lhasa who pretended to fall in with them and saved my life by persuading them to hold me for ransom.”
    Joro nodded slowly. “I see—and presumably we escaped in the jeep while the others slept?”
    Chavasse grinned. “You’re catching on fine.”
    The Tibetan shook his head. “There is one thing you are forgetting. The Russian’s papers—they carry his picture.”
    Chavasse tossed them into the fire. The bloodstained documents started to go brown and curled at the edges. For a brief moment, Kurbsky stared out at him for the last time. Then they dissolved in a puff of flame.
    â€œLet’s say the bandits emptied my pockets,” Chavasse said. “Anything else?”
    Joro shook his head. “Only that it will be very dangerous. There is possibly one thing in our favour. One of my men arrived from Changu last night. Apparently, Colonel Li is away for a few days visiting the outlying villages. Only a captain called Tsen is in charge, and he is young and inexperienced.”
    â€œCouldn’t be better,” Chavasse said. “Even if he radios Lhasa, what can they do except regretsuch unpleasantness befalling a Russian national in their territory and confirm my existence.”
    â€œAssuming that Tsen accepts us, what